Revenue agencies typically have more accounts to be collected than resources to collect and resolve the accounts. Historically revenue agencies work all accounts through a single, inflexible workflow with little consideration to the debtor's willingness or ability to pay. Decisions to use outside collections services occur at the end of the process at which time the accounts are stale.
A revenue agency typically utilizes a FICO score, which is a credit score developed by Fair Isaac & Co. Credit scoring and is a method for determining the likelihood that credit users will pay their bills. Fair, Isaac began its pioneering work with credit scoring in the late 1950s and, since then, scoring has become widely accepted by lenders as a reliable means of credit evaluation. A credit score attempts to condense a borrower's credit history into a single number. However, Fair, Isaac & Co. and the credit bureaus do not reveal how the credit scores are computed. The Federal Trade Commission has ruled this approach to be acceptable. Credit scores are calculated by using scoring models and mathematical tables that assign points for different pieces of information which best predict future credit performance. Developing these models involves studying how thousands, even millions, of people have used credit. Score-model developers find predictive factors in the data that have proven to indicate future credit performance. Models can be developed from different sources of data. Credit-bureau models are developed from information in consumer credit-bureau reports.
Credit scores analyze a borrower's credit history considering numerous factors such as:
Late payments                The amount of time credit has been established        The amount of credit used versus the amount of credit available        Length of time at present residence        Employment history        Negative credit information such as bankruptcies, charge-offs, collections, etc.        
There are typically three FICO scores that are computed by data provided by each of the three most prevalent credit bureaus: Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. Some lenders use one of these three scores, while other lenders may use the middle score.
The use of a credit score to determine the propensity to pay is inflexible in altering the collections model. A revenue agency, for example, may wish to tailor its collection model to better fit available data. Moreover, a revenue agency can customize its collection practices to more effectively use collections resources and to identify those accounts that will require private collections services early in the process.